


Blood is Thicker

by GraceEliz



Series: Lives Happen in Spirals [3]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Boba had an unexpected crisis of faith that almost derailed the whole fic, Gen, Open Ending, Second Person, Second Person Boba Fett, Surprise it's chapter two, Universe Alterations, by the power of vod, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26917630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: Ponds. Bly. Cody, missing. You write their names in mando’a across your hips in a line and have them tattooed in green gold yellow, and then spacing them you write out Fox and Wolffe and do theirs red grey. You draw another mythosaur and the son of a vod draws it on your back, all abstract lines, whilst you talk about revolt.
Relationships: Boba Fett & CC-1010 | Fox
Series: Lives Happen in Spirals [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051664
Comments: 17
Kudos: 98
Collections: New SW Canon Server Works





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [sins of the father](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26892169) by [Ro29](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29). 



You are thirteen.

“Boba Fett?”

The man asking has your face – your Buir’s face – but he looks old, worn, haggard. The sort of old that comes from overwork, you remember that from lessons with Buir. Old in the eyes, and not in the skin. You nod. You couldn’t possibly be anyone else, right? 

He sighs, taps at his padd. “Do you know what your number is?”

You don’t, really, except it’s CC-1 something. “No.” It comes out more uncertain than you’d ever wanted it to be. You are Boba Fett and you survived in spite of, to spite, you are not uncertain. 

“That’s okay,” he soothes, face kind; you don’t want to be soothed, you want to hate him, but he is tired and warm, and you’re so cold and alone you shuffle closer to him. “I have a scanner. Left arm, please.”

You hold out your left arm through the single closed off plasma-beam, and he runs the scanner over it, fast and professional and easy by practice. When he’s done you draw your arm back slowly, and he lets you, and then the plasma beam reappears. 

“CC-1001, okay. I am CC-1010. My name is Fox,” he says, his lighter-than-usual eyes sharp. He looks at you, and you can’t read his expression, even though you’re looking at yourself but older. “I want to talk to you.”

You don’t know why he would. You’ve killed so many of them, ever since you were five and forgot your promise and the boy with the blue eyes was killed because of it. Spares, all of you are just spares for each other. “Why?”

Fox sits down, a clank of armour. His bucket sits beside him. His armour colour is red, red as blood, but he isn’t the one who has blood on his hands. It’s you. Your brother is wearing your blood, or at least, that’s what it looks like. “Because it’s lonely down here, right? You need a brother. You could become a brother, if you wanted to.”

You shake your head. You know that’s impossible. There is no way any of them would want you around, not when they learn what you’ve done, the monster you became. 

“I’ll just talk to you, then. When the stars were young there was a man, and he had a sister, and they had a parent. The parent wanted the worlds all to be peaceful, and so they went to a planet of lost souls for guidance,” starts the man, the clone whose number is only a few down from yours. You wonder if he’s your batch, then realise he must be, because you know the Alphas are older than you. Buir had said so once. He tells you a story about three beings who become gods. It could be a Jedi tale, but you know it isn’t. It’s a mando story. It’s about changing and becoming. 

You are sixteen.

The war is done, over, and you don't want to go back to Coruscant. You're not quite done growing, but you're taller than Buir was, almost as tall as the CT clones, still a few inches short of your full height. You will one day be as tall as Fox, and Wolffe, and Cody, and Bly. They, and Ponds, are your batch.

Were.

Bly isn't around anymore. You know what happened, and it made you sad. His tattoos had grown since you last spoke to him, since you finally got comfortable enough around them to show them your own tattoos. A mythosaur and a lily, one on each shoulder, the son and the daughter, war and peace, the dichotomies of your life. You think Cody might be alive and kicking, literally, and Wolffe, and you've seen Fox on the holo, standing at the back of the Emperor's speeches. You had the chance to kill him once. You should have taken it. Maybe then the War would have ended and you could have all gone to Mandalore. 

You don't want to go back to Coruscant but you're here, now, clearing to land near the barracks of Fourth Sector, the one with the hospital and the dance studio Fox had taken you to once. Only once. But he had and you remember. He is your brother. He lives in your heart. 

You send him the codes, a message. Here I am, big brother. And after, an hour or more after, when the anxiety is building because he always at least looked at your messages to show he was still alive, still okay, help me I'm so afraid, help me.

But Fox doesn't come. You try Cody, but the message bounces. His General is dead. You’ve never had a General, a Jedi; can’t imagine the pain. His Jedi is dead. So is Wolffe’s, and he gets the message, but he doesn’t answer it. Maybe he blames you. In your message to Bly you say you love him and will remember him. His message does not bounce. They were on Felucia. 

You’ll go get him. He deserves that. They all do.  
Fox doesn’t read the messages, but you see him with your own eyes, strutting like the Fetts you are – or are you?

Two days later you go to Fox, because waiting is driving you insane and you get snappy when you’re anxious. A Fett trait if ever there was one, says a contact. When you reach him, through many other brothers who should know you and your beskar'gam but don’t, your ori’vod asks your number and you tell him, "Boba, I am Boba and you're my ori'vod'ika Fox," and he takes off his helmet and his paler-than-normal eyes don't recognise you.

"What is your number," he asks again, getting annoyed, and more tired than ever, his hair more grey than dark, skin too pale, and you know he'll only send you away when he knows, so you pretend you forgot, and he scans your wrist. He is still annoyed by this waste of his time, but that’s what Fox always felt, the annoyance of waste. It was part of his personality. Like how Ponds loved water or Bly would spend hours with his faced pressed into the furs of creatures that once roamed hunting plains, cherishing softness. Fox was annoyed by waste and he still is. 

There’s this, as least. 

Fox isn't Fox, and you don't know why. The scar on your head, where Buir had a surgeon very carefully take the chip they found in your head away, is throbbing. Maybe it’s that. Maybe you were slaves after all. Your anger was fear, still is, fear of being made a slave like them. Your brothers.

There aren’t enough Clones left roaming the galaxy for you to deny them the title of Brothers. 

"You're Fox," you tell him in sixteen-year-old certainty, but he doesn't call you Boba in his protests of it, he calls you one-ohoh-one. "What happened, Fox?” 

There is no answer, but he leaves the little office with you in it on your own, and you know him, yourself, Buir, and know this is him letting you stay. You are alone again, apart from your brothers, and this time it isn't Aurra or buir or because you made yourself a monster. It's something else. But Fox is Fox and all that is left, so you stay.

Time passes. You’re eighteen and afraid of this Vader and of the Emperor but you’re also the best damn bounty hunter at their disposal, because you’re a CC and now you realise that makes you better than the CTs, something in the programming, and now you’re tall like your batchers and strong too, and trained. Stars, you are trained. You will never be Buir, nobody will ever be able to stand in place and say _I will be more known than Jango Fett_ because he was Mand’alor and then broken and then probably the best of the best of all the beroya in the galaxy. No, you’re not Jango Fett, but you are Boba Fett, and you survive. The chips are slow progress, starting at the edges of the galaxy and with Shinies who don’t go near the Emperor, but Fox hasn’t come back to you yet.

How awful that it took so much loss to make you into a brother. How bad of a man, you wonder, would you be, without their temperance of you?

Ponds. Bly. Cody, missing. You write their names in mando’a across your hips in a line and have them tattooed in green gold yellow, and then spacing them you write out Fox and Wolffe and do theirs red grey. You draw another mythosaur and the son of a vod draws it on your back, all abstract lines, whilst you talk about revolt.

Mandalore has fallen, you tell him, but Mandalore isn’t a planet.

Mandalore is a people.

You can’t tell it, you don’t have the Force, but you’ve changed destiny.

You can tell it, and you know it was Fox. Fox saved your life, and you intend to return the favour.


	2. surprise! Chapter two!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “For the memory of those who loved you on principle,” you tell her, and she grins behind the helmet.

You have now reached twenty-five years old, which is over a decade older than the majority of your brothers, a simple fact that drives you to fury on a regular basis. Fury is good, fury means you’re alive, means you can hunt and destroy with all the vehemence of probably well over six million lost brothers, says Bly’s voice in your memory. You press your hand flat to the thigh plate you took off his body, the one you lined in beskar for strength and have worn since you went to Felucia. Lost children, all of the lost children who should never have existed, become the fire of your soul. Fury, you remind yourself, tracing the facing gold lines, fury is my fuel. 

Fox still lives, growing gaunter and older and a little frail every time you manage to visit. Vader treats him badly. You don’t care why, don’t care what justification the galaxy can offer you all for what has been done to you, to the brothers, the clones of one of the most exceptional men to have lived; just that the Empire needs to fall. Every night in your ship, the Slave, homage to your buir, brothers, to Mandalore, you pray to the Stars.

A’den be’kara, ni alor’ye at aliit.

And then in Basic, just to be sure, because your mando’a is not wholly fluent – you’re flying on fumes when it comes to the tongue of mighty warriors – you repeat the prayer. Wrath of the stars, lead me to family. Again, again, and again without fail. Occasionally, brothers ask you why you do it, on the long trips when you hide them away in the Rim, why it is that this is your chant. Why not revenge? Sure you want that, of course you do, you tell them, hand clenching around your blasters in burnt-out grief, I want to destroy everything that could hurt us.

Mandalore is a people, you tell each one, you are one of them, and you’re going to burn with the rage of a mythosaur until there is no fear for the children anymore.

Do you want to learn the chant, you always ask before you set to sleep, cleaning your blades. The slow slide of cloth and oil is soothing, is a scent that you’ve all known since you were tubies, so it seems. A’den be’kara, you always begin, wrath of the stars.

Not every brother can learn the chant. Sometimes you’re too late, and your brothers are mindless killers to the Emperor’s whim. You shoot them, kindly. Kind as you can, that is. Your life hasn’t taught you kindness: your batch did that, and they’re mostly gone. Wolffe sometimes talks, over comms, never face-to-face, tells you to keep strong. Bly is with you, in your heart. Ponds weighs on you. When it rains you stand out, and say rites for him; one day, maybe you’ll stop hurting over him. Cody is still gone, still kicking somewhere, you’re sure. And then there’s Fox, who bears the brunt same as he always has, who reminds you to be kind when you can.

So you are. Twenty-five years you’ve lived, raised to war then lost through it then dropped into rebellion by the massacres of all the people who made the galaxy worth occupying, and if you can free your brothers then you shall do so, even when it hurts. Death is better than this mindless slavery, which goes against everything your brothers ever believed.

Out of the dark, one cold night, after a long hunt which led you nowhere, twelve years into the existence of the Empire, a Jedi comes to you. He is blind, and strong, and fast and sleek, and he has a Mando’ad with him. He wants to know if what you’re doing is true, whether rumour speaks true, whether Boba Fett, son of Jango Fett, brother to millions, truly wants to help.

His name was Caleb. His Commander was Grey. You remember Grey. Grey had been extremely proud of Caleb.

“Your grandmaster was Mace Windu.”

“Yes,” he says.

You nod. “I’ll help you.”

Caleb-Kanan blinks. “I don’t want your help.”

You don’t care what the Jedi thinks: this is your purpose. “You need it. You are vod, brother, aren’t you? Jetii?”

So the crew of the Ghost makes a deal with you, wary eyes on your buir’s marked beskar, wary of the white-and-gold of Bly’s thigh plate contrasting to the pale wash of your beskar, wary of how quiet you are (Wolffe and Cody were the loud ones), even warier of all your blasters and blades and cuffs. The Twi, Hera, is with the Rebellion: you tell her the words, secret words known only to your batch, and tell her to send a message. The little mando girl frowns as she works out the translation. Nonsense, she wants to say, you’re sure, but it isn’t. It’s a code.

It’s a ploy. Fox would be proud. Look at you, he’d say, ruffling your hair as you laugh up at him, maybe you are one of us after all, he’d tease; but no, you’re on eye level to him now. Taller than buir ever got to be.

Kanan joins you when you pray that night, and the Mando’ad,and then the others, until there is a gaggle of you knelt under the stars as you say remembrance, pondsblygreewooleyfivesgreysinkerecho and on until you run out of names and Kanan picks it up, rustily, as if he made himself forget. You can understand. You would have chosen to forget too, but you can’t forget anything. CCs don’t get to forget.

A’den be’kara, ni alor’ye at aliit, you pray, wrath of the stars lead me to family. Save us, you add, aware of your companions, let the Force be with us, Stars, see my brothers as they cry out, help us, lead me to family that I might save them, free them. A’den be’kara, ni alor’ye at aliit.

Perhaps the mando girl wipes away a tear; perhaps she’s just rubbing her eyes. She says a remembrance too, mando names of mando clans, and you think to yourself, they should be my people too, they should have been under my protection, think of what we could have done for you. But it’s too late for that.

Hera Syndulla offers to share the plan with you and you refuse, deadpan, because Lord Vader would pluck it from your head.

You are twenty-six. Fox is dead. Is there anything left for you to strive for? You’ve never been good at this whole nebulous higher cause malarkey, not like some of your brothers. You hadn’t even been there, had to learn it when you touched down on Coruscant and a Shiny – a human woman, not even a Shiny, not a vod – had handed over a white envelope, real paper, when you’d strutted into the barracks, ancient armour and Bly’s thighplate; she handed over Fox’s plates and you put them in your bunk and know you won’t ever touch them again. 

Who is left?

Wolffe. Rex who you’ve spoken to a few times. Gregor, who would fight the Ka’ra. Cody, assuming. Probably. If the Stars are kind. You’re beginning to doubt.

You take more bounties, send the money to the secret Mandalorians scattered over the galaxy, trying where you can be to be kind like they taught you, but it’s hard, when you are fuelled by rage that wants to strike, hunt, hurt. Your own reputation has taken shape much in the pattern of your father’s, now, strong enough to clear the path for you across the galaxy. Fox would be proud of you, you hope – you can see his greyed curls and tired eyes and aged, scarred, skin when you close your eyes.   
Most nights now since that night, on Coruscant feeling the most alone since you were thirteen and a monster, you cry, and you can’t pray. The words stick in your throat. Are the stars listening? Were they ever? 

You are thirty-two and working for a Hutt who makes your skin crawl, but at least he pays well and the money goes to your brothers. Here you’re a spy too, sending information in codes that feel ancient, that nobody but a vod would remember. Vader still employs you, ignoring you the vast majority of the time as though he didn’t murder your only remaining batch mate. You’re probably the last CC in existence.

Ouch.

Leia Organa is pretending to be a bounty hunter. You know she isn’t who she’s pretending to be; you’re a CC. You know these things. She has a Jedi with her, Luke Skywalker, the son of Anakin Skywalker, Jedi General. What do you know of Skywalker? Ruthless, fearless, possessive, Fallen. You don’t trust either of them, but Leia Organa is part of the Rebellion your brothers are – were – with: you hold her a debt.

You hold her a debt.

“Oya vode,” you say quietly, loud enough for her to hear, and her helmet whips towards you, and Luke Skywalker the jetii-ad frowns, and your blaster raises. Bly’s thighplate is heavy on your leg, heavy with memory. “For the memory of those who loved you on principle,” you tell her, and she grins behind the helmet. Jabba the Hutt dies; you have the information you need; you have your beskar, and you live.

The threads of destiny are trembling once more.

Out on the sand, once more under a star sky with a Jedi and a girl and a half-dead smuggler, she asks you a question in mangled mando’a. Only it isn’t mangled. It’s batcher mando’a, the mando’a that the vode learned, sprinkled with hundreds or thousands of words in other languages, concepts inexpressible to anyone not a clone of the Fett.

You smile, dangerous. “Tell them one-ohoh-one is kicking and biting and doing his best,” you tell her, a command, because you’re only a clone but you’re also Boba Fett and she’s only a Princess. She’s rebellion. “Tell Rex to get in touch, tell them I’m still here.”

And then you march over the dunes, towards the secret place you parked a ship too long ago, towards the stars. You grin, unable to hold it back. Bly would get a real kick out of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely had to fight for this so no, I will not be doing more of this, but I'm thinking of doing a Jango one. Yes. Leia gets to kill a Hutt.

**Author's Note:**

> For Ro


End file.
